This entertaining and bizzarre video has been circulating among the inboxes of civil servants in Singapore.

Big Love

Fingerstyle Fleetwood Mac.

As Long As You Follow

This is a pop song I really liked (and still like) for a very long time.

Aren’t both the original and cover versions beautiful? The cover by TE is impressive, it captures the feel and mood of the original. I think it’s especially hard to cover a piano piece on the guitar.

Tommy Emmanuel Playing Billy Joel’s “And So It Goes”

Original music video. Live version.

I was first introduced to Butoh when Sonny, who wrote arts reviews for the mainstream Straits Times gave me a free ticket to a Butoh performance during one of the Singapore Arts Festivals. I no longer remember the name of the troupe but I remember the impact it had on me. Although the majority of the audience was alienated and perhaps disturbed by that performance, I was so struck by it, especially the finale, where the birth of baby was enacted with such a simmering slow and excruciating intensity that it’s fair to say that my lifetime love of butoh began at that instant – it was love at first sight.

I see butoh as a dance of darkness. It perverts and inverts the aesthetic standard by turning the grotesque, wretched and awful into the sublime, transcendent and beautiful. Despite the madness and absurdity (at times abject and empty and at other times humorous) in the butoh performances I’ve seen, there is also a painful and heart wrenching search for grace, redemption and salvation.

Perhaps you can get a taste of what Butoh is in the videos below.

This video is an useful introduction to Butoh.

Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

Edin Valez’s Dance of Darkness

The Sky is Crying

Arkansas Woman

Baby Please

Interview & Live Footage

This is hilarious. A Hindi music video (with English “subtitles” based on what the Hindi words sound like in English) inspired by Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Courtesy of my wife.

God knows…

Final Fantasy 5 “Clash on the Big Bridge”

Final Fantasy VI The Decisive Battle

Chopin

You Dont Know What Love Is – 1977

Somebody Loan Me a Dime (1977)

Fenton Robinson at Buddy Guy’s Legends

How many artistes do you know who sounds the same as good live as on a studio album?

Both Sides Now (Live, 1970)

California (BBC)

The circle game 1966 live (with commentary)

An all-time favourite song of mine that does something to my heart.

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight

Still Crazy After All These Years

Long Ago and Far Away

You’ve Got A Friend ‘71 (with Carole King)